SAN FRANCISCO, CA - JULY 19: A Yahoo! billboard is visible through trees on July 19, 2011 in San Francisco, California. Yahoo Inc. reported second quarter earnings of $237 million, or 18 cents per share, compared to $213 million, or 15 cents per share,compared to one year ago.

Photo: Justin Sullivan, Getty Images

SAN FRANCISCO, CA - JULY 19: A Yahoo! billboard is visible...

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John Melo, CEO of start-up company Amyris, which unveiled its new plant on Tuesday, November 11, 2008. The company is trying to make a renewable form of diesel and has been very tight-lipped about their process. They claim that unlike biodiesel, their product can be used on its own in any regular diesel engine and doesn't need to be blended with petroleum diesel.

BIOTECHNOLOGY

Amyris' sugar cane blend to fuel buses

Viacao Santa Brigida will operate the buses using a 10 percent blend of the renewable fuel starting in August, Emeryville's Amyris said Tuesday. The remaining 90 percent of the fuel will be standard, petroleum-based diesel and biodiesel.

INTERNET

More time given in Google book suit

Google Inc. and a group of publishers and authors got more time to negotiate a possible settlement of a lawsuit over the search-engine company's digital reproduction of books.

"We are not there yet," Michael Boni, a lawyer for the authors, told U.S. Circuit Judge Denny Chin in Manhattan on Tuesday. "They are very complicated, complex issues, requiring us to delve into them in the dog days of summer."

Google was sued in 2005 by authors and publishers who said the company was infringing their copyrights on a massive scale by digitizing books and allowing "snippets" of them to be seen online. Chin objected to an earlier, $125 million settlement, saying it would be unfair to authors.

Chin, who kept the case after he was elevated to the appeals court bench from the U.S. District Court in April 2010, set a new hearing for Sept. 15.

State defaults plunge 19%

Home-mortgage defaults in California fell 19 percent in the second quarter from a year earlier to the lowest in four years as lenders changed foreclosure policies and price declines slowed, according to DataQuick.

A total of 56,633 default notices were recorded statewide in the three months through June, down 17 percent from the first quarter and the lowest number since the second quarter of 2007, the San Diego data company said Tuesday in a statement.

The drop mirrors a deceleration of the slide in California home values, DataQuick said. Defaults peaked at 135,431 in the first quarter of 2009, when the statewide median price fell almost 40 percent.

EARNINGS

Rivals bring down sales at Yahoo

Yahoo reported sales that fell short of estimates as marketers shunned its pages in favor of rival sites.